Wild Altar: a poetry book in progress

My book is called Wild Altar

I would love to share my passion project with you. It’s a poetry book, called Wild Altar. It’s currently a finished second draft.

My instinct tells me that it needs one more draft. One more round of writing before I can begin another type of work: finding the right publisher.

The book consists of 56 poems. So far, four poems have been published in journals.

I want to share my process and progress with you.

Let’s talk about poetry.

What is Wild Altar about?

I’ve been so deeply inside this project and I struggle to say what it’s actually about.

I’m sure that I’m not the only writer to have experienced this. Writers tend towards introversion.

But one of the ways to find clarity is to encourage it.

I’ve been in a few conversations recently, where my elevator pitch got caught in my throat. More accurately, I had no idea how to talk about this book. As always, it’s only after I’ve suffered that I do something about it.

This is the start of something; here’s to clarity.

Wild Altar was written on the road. While travelling around New Zealand (this is my home country), from the Lower North of Wellington to the mountains in the South and many places between.

There are poems about art and museums. Poems about love, family, meditation and magic. There are poems about sleeping in carparks, getting lost in forests and sailing between islands. There are hard moments when I pry under the rug, where we New Zealanders love to sweep our darkness. All encircles the landscape of Aotearoa. All illumes what it is like to live here.

Capture the ephemeral before it evaporates

I disappeared for months in order to write this book. I moved out of the city and onto the road. It was just me, my girlfriend and the desire to write.

It quickly dawned on me that I was living out the fantasy of the impoverished poet.

I have no doubt that hunger and sleep anxiety spilled across the pages of the book. But the life of a writer isn't so bad when there is just enough money to put petrol in the car and coffee on the table.

I’ll be honest with you. The process of composing poetry doesn’t look like much.

Just some human, hunched over a laptop, tip-tapping staccatos. Followed by periods of silence. It also looks like others having to wait to take a shower in the morning because someone is busy scribbling in a waterproof notebook.

All the while, occasionally muttering. Laughing. Maybe shyly, slyly smiling to themselves.

Writing poetry often looks like someone staring into the middle distance. This could even be true because boredom is an important ingredient of the imagination. But beware, an internal alchemy often occurs when encouraged by the right tools.

Poetry can rise from the depths like steam from a pasta pot on the stove.

The job of the poet is to capture the ephemeral before it evaporates.

A good poet knows when to wait and when to eat pasta.

Manuscript to book. A note on publishing

When I was a marketing intern at Penguin Random House (this was part of my post-graduate publishing study), I was involved in a kitchen conversation.

I was by the kettle and a senior publisher was hanging out with the tea.

The conversation was about what a new author needs to get published. They talked about a triangle and I was initially confused. But essentially, an author is vastly more likely to be published by hitting these three things.

1. Good writing.
2. A viable market for the book.
3. An established audience.

Points two and three are proof for the publisher that the book is likely to sell. It helps mitigate their risk. It’s expensive to publish a book. It’s even more expensive to market a book.

What does this mean for me and my poetry?

Well, some big publishers don’t touch poetry, simply because there is not enough money in it. Most print runs for poetry in New Zealand are around 200-300 copies. This is where small presses and universities come in. When my manuscript is finished, I will be looking for a small publisher.

But in order to improve my odds of anyone being interested, my author’s brand needs to demonstrate that it can sell at least 200 copies.

Let me explain further. A typical author’s royalty is somewhere between 5-10%. Assuming a print run of 200 and a retail price of $30. If every single book sells (that alone is an assumption), this is $6000 gross. The author’s royalty is 10%. Which is $600. See where I’m going with this?

For many writers like me, it is a pursuit of passion.

Keep in mind that there are a few different ways publishers calculate royalties.

There are also a few different ways that poets can make money besides book sales. But I’m just making a rough point here.

I’ve been working on this book for seven months and counting. You can do the last bit of math to calculate my hypothetical hourly rate.

But this doesn’t stop me, why should it?

Put simply, I love poetry and that is enough reason to keep writing.

I’m talking about the first print run here. All those numbers build with a backlist and a healthy brand.

Right now, I’m still working on making the writing good.

Consistency

I was writing Wild Altar for hours on end, every day for months. My partner described it as fervour. It felt more like fermentation. Like my insides were fizzing with each new poem. But it was more likely a healthy dose of terror.

What if I never actually finished a book and spent my whole life wishing I had?

Writing a book feels like climbing a cliff. Your fingers remember the rocks; they have been typing for years. You even have a sense of trust that your feet will find footholds. You’ll feel stable for awhile, especially when resting on a ledge. But if you look down, look back, you’ll inevitably think about falling.

This is when your will to write starts to waver. Your body shakes and when you fatigue, you forget why you wanted to climb in the first place. Perhaps, you should go back down. Is it possible to reach the top of the cliff?

If you keep writing, you’ll eventually reach the end of the book. Unless you traverse or give up but don’t think about that.

Just keep going. You’re committed now.

Wild Altar has taught me (and is still teaching me) the lesson of perseverance.

Here’s to one more draft.

That’s it for now.

Till next time,
Harley.